Piræus.—With a basket of ham and claret in the stern-sheets, a cool awning over our heads, and twelve men at the oars, such as the coxswain of Themistocles’ galley might have sighed for, we pulled away from the ship at an early hour, for Eleusis. The conqueror of Salamis delayed the battle for the ten o’clock breeze, and as nature (which should be called he instead of she, for her constancy) still ruffles the Ægæan at the same hour, we had a calm sea through the strait, where once lay the “ships by thousands.”
We soon rounded the point, and shot along under the
“Rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis.”
It is a bare, bold precipice, a little back from the sea, and commands an entire view of the strait. Here sat Xerxes, “on his throne of gold,[[11]] with many secretaries about him to write down the particulars of the action.” The Athenians owed their victory to the wisdom of Themistocles, who managed to draw the Persians into the strait (scarce a cannon shot across just here), where only a small part of their immense fleet could act at one time. The wind, as the wily Greek had foreseen, rose at the same time, and rendered the lofty-built Persian ships unmanageable; while the Athenian galleys, cut low to the water, were easily brought into action in the most advantageous position. It is impossible to look upon this beautiful and lovely spot and imagine the stirring picture it presented. The wild sea-bird knows no lonelier place. Yet on that rock once sat the son of Darius, with his royal purple floating to the wind, and, below him, within these rocky limits, lay “one thousand two hundred ships-of-war, and two thousand transports,” while behind him on the shores of the Piræus, were encamped “seven hundred thousand foot, and four hundred thousand horse,”—“amounting,” says Potter, in his notes, “with the retinue of women and servants that attended the Asiatic princes in their military expeditions, to more than five millions.” How like a king must the royal Persian have felt, when
“He counted them at break of day!”
With an hour or two of fast pulling, we opened into the broad bay of Eleusis. The first Sabbath after the creation could not have been more absolutely silent. Megara was away on the left, Eleusis before us at the distance of four or five miles, and the broad plains where agriculture was first taught by Triptolemus, the poetical home of Ceres, lay an utter desert in the sunshine. Behind us, between the mountains, descended the Sacra Via, by which the procession came to Athens to celebrate the “Eleusinian mysteries”—a road of five or six miles, lined, in the time of Pericles; with temples and tombs. I could half fancy the scene, as it was presented to the eyes of the invading Macedonians—when the procession of priests and virgins, accompanied by the whole population of Athens, wound down into the plain, guarded by the shining spears of the army of Alcibiades. It is still doubtful, I believe, whether these imposing ceremonies were the pure observances of a lofty and sincere superstition, or the orgies of licentious saturnalia.
We landed at Eleusis, and were immediately surrounded by a crowd of people, as simple and curious in their manners, and resembling somewhat in their dress and complexion, the Indians of our country. The ruins of a great city lay about us, and their huts were built promiscuously among them. Magnificent fragments of columns and blocks of marble interrupted the path through the village, and between two of the houses lay, half buried, a gigantic medallion of Pentelic marble, representing, in alto-rilievo, the body and head of a warrior in full armour. A hundred men would move it with difficulty. Commodore Patterson attempted it six years ago, in the “Constitution,” but his launch was found unequal to its weight.
The people here gathered more closely round the ladies of our party, examining their dress with childish curiosity. They were doubtless the first females ever seen at Eleusis in European costume. One of the ladies happening to pull off her glove, there was a general cry of astonishment. The brown kid had clearly been taken as the colour of the hand. Some curiosity was then shown to see their faces, which were covered with thick green veils, as a protection against the sun. The sight of their complexion (in any country remarkable for a dazzling whiteness) completed the astonishment of these children of Ceres.
We, on our part, were scarcely less amused by their costumes in turn. Over the petticoat was worn a loose jacket of white cloth reaching to the knee, and open in front—its edges and sleeves wrought very tastefully with red cord. The head-dress was composed entirely of money. A fillet of gold sequins was first put, à la feronière, around the forehead, and a close cap, with a throat-piece like the gorget of a helmet, fitted the skull exactly, stitched with coins of all values, folded over each other according to their sizes, like scales. The hair was then braided and fell down the back, loaded also with money. Of the fifty or sixty women we saw, I should think one half had money on her head to the amount of from one to two hundred dollars. They suffered us to examine them with perfect good-humour. The greater proportion of pieces were paras, a small and thin Turkish coin of very small value. Among the larger pieces were dollars of all nations, five-franc pieces, Sicilian piastres, Tuscan colonati, Venetian swansicas, &c. &c. I doubted much whether they were not the collection of some piratical caique. There is no possibility of either spending or getting money within many miles of Eleusis, and it seemed to be looked upon as an ornament which they had come too lightly by to know its use.